2020 is resetting our metrics for civilization in uncertain ways. Depending on how you prefer to make judgments, Wuhan is somewhere between the fourth and seventh cataclysm for a century not yet old enough to buy a drink in a bar.

But as noticed in earlier discussions, the middle class is/was being evacuated in the best possible way: In the United States and perhaps elsewhere, more people were leaving the middle class by climbing out than by falling out. That's just imaginably good, and we know this because outside of a few short-on-detail realms in science fiction, nobody *did* imagine that it could happen. Star Trek always had plenty of food and clean spaceships and babes with nourishing decolletage draped in lustrous, tailored velour, but no one ever explained where the money came from. In real life, it happened anyway.

Know who really did well in this era of global improvement? Women! We teach them to read nowadays, and everything! They can have careers and stuff!

And do you know what smart women do when they have resources worth managing and choices about how to live? They stop having so many babies.

But many of those resources are cerebral and rational, i.e. smarts. In intelligence is profoundly heritable, as heritable as any trait we can identify. Intelligence is as heritable as height.

So I think we may have bounced off the ceiling intellectually. We're getting a lot more babies from people who aren't especially bright than we used to get. And the benefits from universal education and so forth appear to have peaked for those kids. (For the children with brains, there's no limit to how much benefit they can extract — at essentially zero cost to themselves — from the postwar cultural machinery.) I've cited this article several times for describing America as a "high school nation"… That doesn't flatter us, but Earth is a grade school world.

Dream your dreams, and plan as you like for a Better Tomorrow™… But if you think good and easy solutions to civilization's problems will come from sharing complex, articulated ideas with a lot of people, you're going to be disappointed.

Some of the cynicism you see in that last comment comes from having moved back to the Midwest after spending most of life in California. People aren't smarter out West, but it's easier to place yourself in an attractive and flattering tier of smarties.

Covid-19 is an intelligence test. To understand its unremarkable (for a pandemic) nuances, you need a well-grounded appreciation for the biology, and for what's been learned from earlier tragedies of this type. People who think that masks are a policy problem, or that the point of the game is to protect only oneself, might simply not have the brains to contribute to civilization as this monstrosity roars without surcease.

I see people wearing no masks, or masks under their noses, or ancient bandanas wafting over their neck wattle, like the least-intimidating bandits you could imagine. Yesterday I saw a girl wearing a sleep eyeshade on her face, upside-down over her lips, with her nostrils poking over the top.

These people aren't protecting anyone else's health, and they surely aren't protecting their own.

Since the internet was born, there have been endless jokes about 'Darwin awards,' punch lines full of ridicule for the dim and reckless.

Chuck's not joking any more. Nature is selecting for the intelligent and the informed.

This is that thing where you write a comment and then go to Twitter and see that, in the same minutes you were typing into the blog, someone you admire was affirming precisely your point.

Among children from highly educated parents, genetic factors had a far greater effect on educational attainment than among those whose parents had low levels of education, accounting for 75% of the individual differences.

I'm impressed by people who grow vegetables instead of just planting vegetables and watching them slowly die. (Not naming any names, such as my own.)

Ah, a fellow plant serial killer. My house is where plants go to die.

Ironically, I come from a family of green thumb enthusiasts. My grandmother could grow a plant from a dead stick. My uncle has turned his backyard into a tiny vegetable farm and could feed a family of five from it. My sister and her husband own an actual farm; sheep mostly, but some crops. My father grew tomatoes and roses regularly.

The tomatoes haven't done so well this year. It is just too hot. But I'm getting the soil working right (which is a multiyear project around here) so the onions finally taste like onions.

On a different topic, the idea that our society is becoming more complicated and that technology is advancing so that people need to have a higher IQ in order to be employed has been advanced around here a couple of times. How figuring out what to do with that 10% or 15% on the low end of the IQ bell curve is societies greatest challenge and such. Looking at labor participation rate data these concepts appear to be false.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate

Instead the primary determinate looks to be the government enforced minimum cost of a job rather than the IQ of job seekers. But why is that? The IQ&jobs claim makes so much sense, why doesn't it show up in the data?

1. Tools may be more complex but they are designed for their users. Just take the hammer for an example. Back in the stone age you just had a rock. Then people designed things more like the modern hammer. You even have nail guns today. While the tool became more and more complex (and worked better and better) the requirements on the user didn't change much. The tool is designed for the user not the other way around.

2. The issue of what to do with the mentally retarded isn't a new thing. Read up on McNamara's Morons. The same issues apply to most any job. As Amy points out today being a farmer isn't as easy as just trowing some seeds on the ground and picking up whatever grows. Some jobs may require a very high IQ to accomplish and others much less but unfortunately there never were many jobs that the mentally retarded could be successful at.

Ironically, I come from a family of green thumb enthusiasts. My grandmother could grow a plant from a dead stick. My uncle has turned his backyard into a tiny vegetable farm and could feed a family of five from it. My sister and her husband own an actual farm; sheep mostly, but some crops. My father grew tomatoes and roses regularly.

Conan the Grammarian at August 4, 2020 5:30 AM

Hail is the enemy here in Wyoming. Every third year or so it will take out the whole project. Sometimes, discouragingly, three years in a row.
My mother managed to grow tomatoes one year. Don’t know how but we ended up with a hundred and fifty pounds of them. Never happened again.

Hail is the enemy here in Wyoming. ~ Isab at August 4, 2020 7:13 AM

Wyoming weather is intimidating in general. Those snow barriers beside the highways are huge, enough to give anyone pause.

I live in the Caribbean, that means all sorts of bugs and animals out there to eat the plants.

Leaf cutter ants that will destroy everything overnight; white butteflies that will pepper their eggs over the leafy greens; Trigona Nigerrima -biologists offended by the Bobbit Worm name should look at this- that will bite crops and flowers to ruin just to get what sugar flows in the sap; and the list goes on and on and on..

Oh, and the best friend an Aphid can have are not ants, it's wasps because these ones eat the ladybug larvae.

It's a miracle we can actually grow something.

Oh, and squirrels. Goddamn tree rats, they treat tomatos like college kids treat Communism: One bite and they don't like it, but then they will bite the next tomato and the next one and the next one and the next one ad infinitum in hopes that the next one will be the right one.

Wyoming weather is intimidating in general. Those snow barriers beside the highways are huge, enough to give anyone pause.

Conan the Grammarian at August 4, 2020 7:34 AM

We don’t get that much snow in general except high in the mountains.

My ancestors homesteaded that area you are talking about. The actual snow fences help a little to keep the Snow chi Min trail open between Laramie and Rawlins but if you see huge fences, chances are they are the ones designed to channel the migrating elk herds into the passages cut under the highway. It keep them off the interstate, and hopefully out of your lap when they come through the windshield of your car.

Ahh, refreshing. This thread is pleasing, with its wit and wisdom.

Ahhh...

> Sixclaws at August 4, 2020 7:59 AM

I am fucking stealing that metaphor.

> My house is where
> plants go to die.

An ex used to see me eyeballing potteds in the superstore, and she'd say "Dude, let them live...." Because she knew.

She wouldn't let me get a dog, either.

You knew it was too peaceful. Somthing's going on in Lebanon. A massive explosion ripped through Beirut today.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/lebanon-videos-show-huge-explosion-rocking-port-of-beirut

Goddamn tree rats, they treat tomatos like college kids treat Communism:

Raccoons to corn is the same. And they tear down the stalk, so even if they don't gnaw on all of the ears, you're still screwed. My father had the green thumb, could grow pretty much anything. Tho he did curse the white butterflies, as their youngins like munching on his cabbage plants.

A massive explosion ripped through Beirut today.

I've seen many vids on twitter of this. One showed a screen cap from local TV were it was claimed this was due to seized sodium nitrate, which can be used to make solid rocket fuel.

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1290683121927630849

I don't know if it was or wasn't, but that was a massive explosion and I don't think it was from fireworks. An ANFO detonation might come close to that level of devastation.

FYI, you can turn a pineapple's crown into a house plant.

All those videos where they poke the fruit's crown and put them on water are just overthinking.

Just twist the crown off the fruit, remove the bits of fruit and leaves at the base until you see brown dots and then plant it on a pot with sandy soil for easy drainage.

Save for cold weather pineapple plants are nigh indestructible and can live on a pot on the kitchen's window sill for years.

I don't know if it was or wasn't, but that was a massive explosion and I don't think it was from fireworks. An ANFO detonation might come close to that level of devastation.

I R A Darth Aggie at August 4, 2020 1:02 PM

The color of the smoke made me think of IRFNA. (Inhibited Red Fuming Nitric Acid) which is one of two components of a rather old and dangerous formula for liquid rocket fuel.

And yea, I have seen it before, in a hang firing rocket on the island of Crete in 1982.

Anyone taking any bets on Ecuador's navy being able to repel all 260 Chinese fishing boats bearing down on the Galapagos right now?

*googles IRFNA*

Oh. Not that I think poison gas is at play here, but that's some nasty stuff. Try not to track it into the house.

IRFNA also has been used as a decontamination substance in facilities producing mustard agent.

https://gulflink.health.mil/irfna/irfna_sec01.htm

Anyone taking any bets on Ecuador's navy being able to repel all 260 Chinese fishing boats bearing down on the Galapagos right now?

Without expending ordinance? zero. Expending ordinance exocets and/or torpedos might do some real damage. Risk/reward?

Wikipedia indicates they have 2 subs, 2 guided missile frigates, 6 guided missile corvettes, 2 offshore patrol vessels, 3 fast attack craft, and various auxiliaries. The guided missiles in question appear to be Exocets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian_Navy#Active_ships

Their air force isn't much better: 9 Mirage III variants, and 17 Super Tucano trainers, but those can be configured to be light attack aircraft. In the US, they're designated as an A29, tho more of SOCOM toy for the moment.

"Help Asheville Bears" (HAB) is offering a $5,000 reward for anyone who can find out who put a 'Trump 2020' sticker on the bear’s collar.

https://wlos.com/news/local/reward-offered-for-information-on-who-put-trump-2020-sticker-on-bear

Anyone taking any bets on Ecuador's navy being able to repel all 260 Chinese fishing boats bearing down on the Galapagos right now?

Words are empty for these mainlanders, the moment the Ecuadorian navy ships turn around they will continue fucking up the sea.

Mark my words, these Chinese fishing vessels are only after high-value marine life like Pacific Bluefin Tuna, and the fins of the sharks; and they have no problem whatsoever using drifnets to destroy an entire marine ecosystem for it.

Turns out the Word of the Day for August 4th was "exothermic."

The plot thickens

Al Arabiya reporting: "Initial information: The explosion occurred in a Hezbollah arms store in Beirut Port."

https://mobile.twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi/status/1290711101081092097